Michelle Smith—the woman behind the fashion label Milly—shakes up a 1920s apartment with bold patterns, punchy colors, and a wicked eye for style

Most Read

Michelle Smith's bracingly colorful vintage-look dresses started taking closets by storm in 2000. Not long after, she and her business-partner husband, Andrew Oshrin, marched models down the catwalk wearing Milly, their ladylike-with-an-edge collection. A nanosecond later, fashionista actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston were big fans. "Michelle's mix of urban cool and feminine attitude has made Milly a hot label," says Ken Downing, the fashion director of Neiman Marcus.

So perhaps it was meant to be that Smith and Oshrin would wind up living above a prime fashion-boutique stretch of Madison Avenue in a 1920s neo-Gothic building. "I knew it was the perfect apartment when I realized the Christian Louboutin shop was right across the street," says the designer, a footwear fanatic whose closet shelves are precisely constructed to accommodate the four-inch heels of her Manolo Blahniks—just some of the dozens of styles that have emerged from Smith's runway collaborations with the superstar cobbler.

The two-bedroom apartment—which the designer and her husband share with their nine-month-old daughter, Sophia—required a thorough gutting. But the couple's shared vision made the renovation surprisingly smooth. "We wanted the overall mood to be a young, sexy feeling," Smith says. "Like moving into Grandma's apartment and making it modern and whimsical, but still classic."

First on the agenda was to rid the place of its Miss Havisham doldrums: exposed wiring, outdated plumbing, dilapidated plaster walls, and a dark, awkward floor plan. The airy living room and its double-height drama, however, gave every indication that the apartment was a diamond in the rough. "Andy and Michelle saw through the mess," says architect Anik Pearson, whose firm worked on the revamp with interior designer Shaun Jackson.

Stimulated by the building's distinctive style, Pearson brought the living room up a notch with a coffered ceiling worthy of a château, while Jackson gave the entrance hall a one-two punch with graphic black-and-beige David Hicks wallpaper sparkling with golden highlights. More thrilling is the transition from intimate entry to majestic living room; the difference in scale between the adjacent volumes makes for a domestic version of shock and awe. "My designs are bold, my fabrics are bold, and I wanted the apartment to be a bold statement as well," Smith says. "I love the feeling when you walk around the corner from the front door, and you're like, Whoa!"

Separated from the living room by pocket doors whose design is an adaptation of a 1960s textile motif, the dining room is just as eye-opening. Its opulent combination of golden floral wallpaper, Art Deco table, midcentury Venetian chandelier, and 1940s chairs by designer Gilbert Rohde makes the lack of windows barely noticeable. "Since it's tiny and enclosed, it needed to be really over-the-top," Smith says. Adds Jackson, "Michelle wanted to glam it up, because otherwise, the room could have looked like a dungeon."

Smith's enthusiasm for gutsy gestures was honed during early career stints in Paris, where she worked for Hermès, Christian Dior, and Louis Vuitton and combed through Europe's finest textile-mill archives. "I always like to mix patterns, prints, and textures, and I tried to do the same with our apartment," the designer says. "For me, it's like a big collage."

In the living room, the overscale leaf motif of the 1930s French wool rug contrasts with chairs that flaunt a zebra stripe in an unexpected colorway of yellow and white. The sofa's linen upholstery offers a neutral background for cushions of white faux fur and red cut velvet. Overhead dangles a 1950s American brass-and-crystal chandelier that looks like a giant dandelion, and one wall displays a portrait of a startlingly beautiful nun graced with a Brigitte Bardot pout. It's artist Tony Scherman's irreverent depiction of Catherine Millet, the author of the racy 2002 memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

The atmosphere of the rooms is "sensual and playful," says Jackson, noting the come-hither arc of the legs of the Rohde dining chairs and the exaggerated curves of the mohair headboard in the master bedroom. The kitchen has been considerably brightened up as well, expanded from its original galley confines to incorporate two additional windows, a breakfast area, and a butler's pantry and laundry. Now white-tiled and light-filled, it is a family hangout where Smith rustles up regular Sunday dinners for friends and relations—the menus frequently include odes to her Mississippi roots, such as black-eyed peas and a great-great-grandmother's recipe for fried chicken—while gazing over treetops.

As Smith explains, the common thread here is "a little unexpected flourish or sparkle." That sense of bedazzlement extends to the Smith-Oshrins. The young family is ready for anything life brings, and business is growing. After bestowing a kiss on Sophia's downy blonde head, the designer muses—in a tone that suggests she can't quite believe her good fortune—"We're having a moment right now."